1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with an image processing program. The invention relates particularly to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with an image processing program for processing a file containing page defining objects, at least one of which is used in a plurality of locations of the file.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the need for the variable printing has been increasing for mass printing represented by direct mail from the standpoint of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Variable printing here means the printing method in which the output contents of each page can be partially changed depending on the needs.
In the variable printing, it takes additional time for transferring data as it is necessary to transmit the same master data repeatedly if the master data and the replacement data are transmitted to a printer after synthesizing them in a personal computer (PC).
In order to solve this problem, a technology is proposed (Unexamined Publication No. JP-A-2003-110831) for transferring the master data and the replacement part data to the printer from the PC in advance, and transferring only the necessary additional data to the printer from the PC when they are required for processing the specific pages. According to this technology, the amount of data transfer is reduced so that the data transfer time can be reduced as well.
However, although the abovementioned technology makes it possible to avoid the repetitive transfer of the same data, it still requires synthesizing the master data and the replacement data for each page. In other words, there is a problem that it takes a lot of time to synthesize data preventing further improvement of the performance of a printing process, as it is necessary to conduct a synthesis for each page while the same data is used for multiple pages.